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220-mph Solar-Powered Train Proposed In Arizona
Mike writes "An ambitious Arizona company has recently revealed plans for a solar powered bullet train that will streak across the desert at 220 mph, traveling from Tuscon to Phoenix in 30 minutes flat. Proposed by Solar Bullet LLC, the system comprises a series of tracks that would serve stations including Chandler, Casa Grande, Red Rock, and Marana, and may one day be extended to Flagstaff and Nogales. The train would require 110 megawatts of electricity, which would be generated by solar panels mounted above the tracks." Local coverage of the plan takes a harder look, noting that Solar Bullet LLC is two guys who are now asking local governments in the towns at which such a train would potentially stop for $35K for a legal and feasibility study. Total cost is estimated at $27B.
Whether or not this would fly will all come down to cost. I've made the drive from Tucson to Phoenix when it is bumper to bumper the entire way and going the speed limit is physically impossible. A half hour train ride sounds very nice in light of that. But the reality is the ride and the electric car rental on the other end have to be cheaper than driving down there in one's own car. Arizona cities are textbook cases of sprawl. It is almost impossible to get around in them without a vehicle, especially in the summer. It's unlikely too many people would want to just ride the train and not need a car on the other end.
Then there is that time thing. It's not making the trip in 30 minutes if it stops 5 times between the two cities. Maybe they are thinking of express trips interspersed with trips that stop? The article doesn't say. Of course the way things are going, eventually this would run right up the middle of one big metro area.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This is what the green economy is all about. Get rich on the government handouts or by imposing government requirements of consumers' energy consumption.
Two guys pitching a feasibility study? Sounds like the monorail episode of the Simpsons.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I don't really feel like paying $27B so that people in Arizona can have super-duper-fast commute. That's a lot of our cash or the riders' luxury.
Can't they just get a 60 mph version for a lot less money?
... as long as you live in the desert. This is a great idea, if they pull it off. Clean, reliable, and fast as hell. While it's not (well, probably not) feasible in 'regular' climates (like Ontario, or the prairies, or even the mid west) where sunshine isn't a guarantee - it could be a step in the right direction for self-sufficient transportation infrastructure. When you push the technology envelope, everyone wins.
Now, how long before bureaucracy clouds over this idea?
http://www.bistolas.net
(np)
traveling from Tuscon to Phoenix in 30 minutes flat
It is estimated that the journey at night could take up to 12 hours.
Smivs on the intertubes!
Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth ...
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[http://www.snpp.com/episodes/9F10.html]
I can see the fnords!
1.21 gigawatts?!?! What?!?!?
Oh. Well that makes tons more sense. In fact, let me just get out these multi-megawatt solar panels I have sitting around...
Seriously, this is a rather larger undertaking. Generating 110 megawatts (per train, I imagine?) is no small feat. Especially for solar paneling. That's usually the type of thing you need your own power plant for. It's a nice idea, but you'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical of:
a) Solar Power only above the rails being effective
b) The practicality of any design that relied only on the rail footprint
c) The realistic cost benefits of this idea
d) That maintenance costs won't be overwhelming
e) That consumer demand for service won't result in the train operating during periods where it will be forced to pull from the grid. Frustratingly, very likely during the hours when demand is high for home lighting/heating/etc.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Solar Bullet LLC has already built trains in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by golly it put them on the map!
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
I had the same idea a few years ago, except mine was along the lines of a highway, with the power going to cars. The road would be set up like a giant slot car track and the pannels would provide power to it. As a bonus the solar panels would provide shade to reduce AC use and the structure would be useable for running data lines between cities.
Arizona is not fit for human habitation. Best plan for Arizona is for all the people of Arizona to move to places like Pittsburgh, where there is plenty of water and nice homes for dirt cheap prices. That will be lot more green, enviro friendly etc etc than this nonsense about 220 mph train that connects two points in the desert.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As opposed to the standard non-green economy, which is all about externalizing environmental costs, so that others can pay for it, while you rub your hands in anticipation of quarterly profits?
Lack of environmental regulation and incentives is a handout to companies that pollute; the cost is born by the general public (or, even worse, by a small segment of the public who are negatively impacted in a massive way (flooding, disease, loss of livelihood, etc).
Yes, people will take advantage of incentives -- this is true of any incentive. On the other hand, I consider people who bitch about environmental incentives and regulations to be selfish bastards who choose not to, or cannot, comprehend that there are true costs to environmental damages, and that these externalized costs must either be internalized by the parties responsible, or matched by incentives to be environmentally responsible.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Regardless of the idea, I loved the 1950's style "World of Tomorow" style rendering they did. Take that you kids and your fancy CAD packages and 3D modeling.
Assume that the cost of the thing is financed like a 30 year mortgage. Just as a rule of thumb, with interest we're talking about a total of 54 billion. Just to satisfy construction costs, a need to make a payment of 150 million a month, every month. To make that payment, we need to have 5 million dollars a day, ever day. To get that, assuming a $10 a day per person spend, you'll have to have 500,000 riders a day, every day, traveling across Arizona. Is that economical? Are there THAT many people riding back and forth? I think this project is a stretch.
This is my sig.
Thank you for sending our US dollars to your comrades in al-Qaeda-financing Saudi Arabia, "patriot".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes it would be faster than by car.
It would? From where to where?
Last time I looked, trains could only travel on tracks.
Trains run to schedules, which means you have to wait for them.
Trains only stop at stations which means you have to travel to and from the station.
Trains are only faster than a car under the conditions that
1: you live near a station and
2: want to travel near to another station,
3: without having to change between lines or other modes of transport.
There's a very good reason people have embraced the car with open arms.
Deleted
Hmm. Perhaps.
I have 48 solar panels on my roof in northern CA. Yesterday they generated 45 kWH between them. Figure that the middle of the desert is actually a better solar energy source and bump that to (say) 60, and the multiplier becomes 110,000 / 60 = ~1800 times as many panels or 86,400.
There's ~116 miles between Tucson and Phoenix. That's ~750 panels per mile. It's a lot, but it's not unfeasible.
I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid, I think some of them are, but the energy side could be made to work. They ought to get a significant discount on the price (~ $1k/panel) if they're ordering circa 90,000 of them, which should help their cost-benefit analysis :)
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
They claim the cost will be 27 billion dollars. If they make 100 dollars per rider it will take how many riders?
If they build it using bond money you will have to pay the interest as well. It would take 270,000,000 riders and that is without interest. So if you had a million riders a year it would only take 270 years to pay it off.
So I would say that it is insane. Yes you could charge more for the ticket but I was using $100 as the profit on the ticket. You will still have to pay for up keep and other operating expenses.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If you want the train to take you past Topeka, you have to beat it in a riddle contest. One sure-fire winning riddle:
How did the dead baby cross the road?
Answer: It was stapled to the chicken!!
Now who wants to ride on Blaine, the insane train? I know I do!
~AA
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
People keep talking about urban sprawl like it's an insurmountable issue. As I've said recently, Japanese cities have massive sprawl and they manage just fine.
As cool as high speed rail lines are the big problem is that they're a huge waste of money if there isn't some sort of infrastructure for getting people around each city without cars. What American cities and suburbs need are extensive rail systems which service outlying areas in addition to the city core.
And this doesn't just mean a spoke and hub layout, this means that those outlying areas should be directly connected as well. Take a look at this map of the rail lines owned by a single company around Tokyo.
Want to be really impressed? Check out this PDF. In that map, Shibukawa, tucked away in the upper left corner of that map is 120km from Tokyo. That should give you a sense of how extensive their rail system is.
If you want people to take rail seriously this is the sort of extensive service you need to provide. I'd take the train to work if it provided me this level of accessibility. Hell, I wouldn't even need a car.
This is the embarrassment that passes for a rail system in the New York area. Just imagine trying to get from somewhere like Poughkeepsie to New Haven.
Of course, there's another issue. The rail system in Japan runs like clockwork. With far fewer lines Metronorth is incapable of ever being punctual. Every year they send out press releases stating, with pride, that their trains are on average only 5 or 10 minutes late. I rode the New Haven line for years and I can't recall it ever being on time. Hell, it was even late departing the very first station.
Every so often the train manages to pull down power lines or at least damage them sufficiently to cause significant delays as has been happening the past week or so. The bathrooms are a cesspool and unfortunately a lot of riders are slobs who leave their crap on the train when they get off. And then there's the vandalism.
Despite increased ridership the MTA, which runs the rail system around New York, can barely stay afloat without drastically raising fees or getting bailouts from the government. Years ago they began ordering new trains. I've yet to see one. But the bigger joke is that some of these new cars are being pulled by diesel locomotives. On an electric line! It's crap from the bottom up.
These are all important issues that need to be taken seriously if anyone expects a rail line to be successful. But an extensive rail system does make far more sense than any high speed rail line.
Unfortunately, in the US there are far too many obstacles for any such system to ever see fruition. First, are all the environmentalists who piss and moan about everything even if it were to provide real long-term advantages. Just as bad are all the residents who have this irrational fear of any perceived threat to their idyllic communities. They're all wrapped up in their selfish desire to preserve their little communities even if these projects would ultimately benefit everyone. In the Northeast there are a number of extremely helpful projects which have been blocked by just these sort of people.
I'm quite pessimistic about the whole thing. American's have lost that can-do attitude a long time ago and I think have grown quite self-centered. I mean self-centered from the standpoint of wanting to be sheltered by the government from all the little challenges of life. Although, I don't doubt that the government will spend untold billions on some boondoggle.
High speed rail is pretty efficient at moving people when compared to cars or planes even without the solar angle but I'd prioritize work on the existing projects and extend deployment to link the Midwest to the East Coast.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
One thing that's been missing from this country is the willingness to do big, daring things out of national pride. For example, the Europeans had the Concorde and Japan has their high-speed rail. I'd love to see this happen just to show that we can. Develop the technology and let others follow.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You must be addressing the idiots that don't want us to use our own gas and oil natural resources, of which we have plenty, if only we were allowed to get it.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I AM CONTACTING WITH YOU ON BEHALF OF THE RAILS CONSTRUCTION PLANING CORPORATION SOLAR BULLET LLC. I HOPE THIS DAY FINDS YOU WELL. MY ASSOCIATES AND I ARE PREPARED TO START THE MOVING FORWARD ON CONSTRUCTIONS OF A 220MPH SOLAR-POWERED BULLET TRAIN TO MAJOR CITIES IN ARIZONA AND ALSO TO BE PASSING THROUGH THE SMALLER CITIES SUCH AS YOURS. THIS WILL BE A TWENTY-SEVEN BILLION US DOLLARS PROJECT ( $27 000 000 000 US ) WHICH WE ARE PREPARED TO MAKE LARGE INVESTMENTS IN AT NO COST TO YOUR TOWNSHIP. IN ORDER TO RELEASE FUNDS WE WILL BE REQUIRED TO DO A VERY SMALL ENVIRONMENTAL STUDY AT THE COST OF THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND US DOLLARS ( $35 000 US ) TO SECURE THE TWENTY-SEVEN BILLION. THIS STUDY COSTS WILL BE SPLIT BETWEEN THE CITIES OF ARIZONA ON THE PATHS OF THE SOLAR-POWERED BULLET TRAIN AT THE COST OF FIVE-THOUSAND US DOLLARS ( $5 000 US ) PER CITY. PLEASE SEND IN HASTE THE FIVE-THOUSAND US DOLLARS TO OUR ASSOCIATES SO WE CAN BE MADE ABLE TO SECURE THE TWENTY-SEVEN BILLION US DOLLARS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! WARMEST REGARDS, BILL GAITHER, CO-PRESIDENT, SOLAR BULLET LLC RAYMOND WRIGHT, CO-PRESIDENT, SOLAR BULLET LLC
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
The trip costs $19 and takes a little over an hour.
I don't think halving the trip time is a compelling reason to spend $27B, apparently people are willing to spend far more than an hour in traffic to avoid the existing train route.
That is not correct. Amtrak does not service Phoenix at all. Take a look at their route map. The closest Amtrak station is 35 miles south of downtown Phoenix in Maricopa.
Eating is for wimps.
You're wrong. They avoid the "existing train route" because it only exists in your imagination.
my sig is an honor student
How about linking the East Coast to the East Coast?
The Northeast Corridor is basically at capacity. We're eventually going to need to add another mainline.
South of DC, the NEC is f-ing terrible. Amtrak don't own the tracks, and on a bad day, it can take 6-8 hours to make it from DC to Hampton Roads. The line from Richmond to Newport News is particularly bad, given that it's single-tracked, carries lots of freight, and only runs 2 Amtrak trains per day in each direction.
(While I'm complaining about Hampton Roads, I might as well add that our other public transportation options appear to have been designed to intentionally suck. The area's geography makes it a *great* candidate for commuter rail, given that you could effectively reach most of the population with one rail line, and a few well-placed buses.)
High-speed rail in the US is also made unnecessarily difficult by the fact that the FRA judges the safety of rail vehicles based upon their weight. This makes most European rolling stock impossible to use on US tracks -- the Acela has been compared to a tank on rails, due to its weight.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Wikipedia is usually useful. I tend to use this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_373 but feel free to substitute a high-speed train from your own country. That train is 12MW, and isn't especially fast any more.
I don't know, but presumably the full 12MW is only drawn at full power, while accelerating etc.
Pretty much anytime a train station is built, be it metro, or longer commuter trains, local business and housing growth ensues. - Why? - because people want to live by trains/metros. Building a train station there wil decrease sprawl.
..........FULL STOP.